NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Round-Up: MSI, ZOTAC, GB

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GeForce GTX 650 Details

We didn’t get our hands on a card for testing, but should mention that NVIDIA is also releasing the GeForce GTX 650 today. The GeForce GTX 650, however, is not based on the same GPU as the GeForce GTX 660. Although both are based on NVIDIA’s Kepler microarchitecture, the GTX 650 sports a smaller, more pared down GPU. Whereas the GeForce GTX 660 is built around the GK106 GPU, the GeForce GTX 650 is built around GK107.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 650 Reference Card

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650

Specifications & Features

Processing Units

Graphics Processing Clusters

1

SMXs

2

CUDA Cores

384

Texture Units

32

ROP Units

16

Clock Speeds

Base Clock

1058 MHz

Boost Clock

N/A

Memory Clock (Data Rate)

5000 MHz

L2 Cache Size

256KB

Memory

Total Video Memory

1024 or 2048MB

Memory Interface

128-bit

Total Memory Bandwidth

80 GB/s

Texture Filtering Rate (Bilinear)

33.9 GigaTexels/sec

Physical & Thermal

Fabrication Process

28 nm

Transistor Count

1.3 Billion

Connectors

2 x Dual-Link DVI, 1 x mini-HDMI

Form Factor

Dual Slot

Power Connectors

1 x 6-pin

Recommended Power Supply

400 watts

Thermal Design Power (TDP)

64 watts

Thermal Threshold

98° C

Fundamentally the GK107 GPU is similar to the more powerful GK106 and GK104 used on more powerful cards like the GeForce GTX 670 / 680. The GK107 at the heart of the GeForce GTX 650, however, has been scaled back and features fewer CUDA cores, texture units, ROPs, L2, and memory partitions.

GK107: GeForce GTX 650 GPU Block Diagram

The GK107 GPU is comprised of roughly 1.3B transistors and is manufactured using TSMC’s 28nm process. The GPU features a single GPC (Graphics Processing Cluster) with 2 SMXs and a total of 384 CUDA cores. There are 32 texture units and 16 ROPs in the GPU, and it features 256K of L2 cache and a 128-bit memory interface.

The GK107 does not support NVIDIA’s GPU boost technology, so there is only a single GPU clock to report. Reference GTX 650’s will have a GPU frequency of 1058MHz with 1250MHz (5000MHz effective) memory. At those clocks, the GeForce GTX 650 offers up to 33.9GTexels/s of textured fillrate with 80GB/s of peak memory bandwidth. Needless to say, performance of this card won't be in the same league as the GTX 660 or more powerful cards, but the GTX 650 should make for a decent, entry-level DX11-class GPU.

GeForce GTX 650 cards require only a single 6-pin supplemental power connector and have a TDP of only 64W. Outputs on the card consist of 2 x Dual-Link DVI and 1 x mini-HDMI.